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Emma rose to fame for her iconic roles in The Vicar of Dibley and Notting Hill

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For many years she worked extensively in theatre, as well as in TV adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit and Kingsley Amis’ Take A Girl Like You.

Born in Doncaster, she was the daughter of John, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, and Noelle, a pharmacist.

Her sister Sarah Doukas, and brother Simon, went on to run Storm Model Management, which discovered Kate Moss at the age of 14.

While Chambers was young her parents separated and her father emigrated to Australia.

BBC

Emma won the award for Best Actress at the 1988 British Comedy Awards for playing Alice

She hated prep school, where she developed asthma and eczema, and once described it as “the kind of place where they beat you”.

Happier times followed at St Swithun’s boarding school in Winchester where she appeared in a number of drama productions before accepting a place at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Chambers made her TV debut as Margaret, one of the Brangwen children, in a 1988 BBC adaptation of DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow.

After a brief stint in The Bill she delivered a polished performance as Charity Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit in 1994, the same year that The Vicar Of Dibley started, inspired by the Church of England’s decision to allow the ordination of women priests in 1992.

Chambers appeared in all 20 episodes, winning Best Actress at the 1988 British Comedy Awards for playing Alice.

But despite portraying the ditzy verger brilliantly and making it look easy, Chambers was quick to point out that she wasn’t Alice.

“I am vulnerable, emotional and caring but I am not thick,” she said.

“I think she is gorgeously naive, like a child. And that is one thing I am not.”

In 1991 she married fellow actor Ian Dunn after they appeared in a play together in Scarborough but later admitted the actual day itself was a bit of a whirlwind.

Emma Chambers' life in pictures

Emma Chambers as Alice Tinker in The Vicar of Dibley

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Emma Chambers in Notting Hill

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Emma Chambers as Alice Tinker in The Vicar of Dibley

PA

EMMA CHAMBERS AND NEIL PEARSON, LONDON, BRITAIN - 2002

RICHARD YOUNG/REX/Shutterstock

'HOW DO YOU WANT ME' BBC TV PROGRAMME PHOTOCALL, BRITAIN - FEB 1998

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Thames TV Archive - 'Des O'Connor Tonight' TV programme

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'HOW DO YOU WANT ME' BBC TV PROGRAMME PHOTOCALL, BRITAIN - NOV 1997

NILS JORGENSEN/REX/Shutterstock

HOW DO YOU WANT ME

PA Archive/PA Images

BBC How do you want me

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Notting Hill World Charity Premiere

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Emma Chambers

PA

“My wedding was very short,” she recalled.

“I was playing the lead in an Alan Ayckbourn play and was only given a day off. My sister Sarah is a model agent and one of her bookers made me a dress which cost £180.”

She continued: “I still look at it in my wardrobe and think it is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The wedding was in the New Forest. I loved it because I’d never had a big party as we had always been on the move. My father wasn’t there for personal and geographical reasons – he lived in Australia. But I had been living with Ian [McKellen] and he was a sort of father figure to me. We didn’t have a honeymoon. I was back at work on the Monday.”

Chambers died of a heart attack and is survived by her husband and siblings.